By Rev. Fr. Christopher Kwame Korang
“Tomorrow, tomorrow is the language of the vulture” goes the old adage. The vulture is traditionally perceived to be a lazy animal because it has no nest. It sleeps on any tree branch that it can perch on and flies away the following day. When the rain-laden clouds gather and the rain seems to be coming, the vulture says, “tomorrow, I will build my house”.
As soon as the rain is over and the Sun radiates its light and heat onto the earth, providing some warmth, the Vulture shakes itself dry and forgets the need to weave a nest. As a result, the vulture has no nest due to laziness and its concomitant procrastination.
Procrastination has been rightly described by Charles Dickens as the “thief of time”, and the truism resides in the fact that procrastination always envisages tomorrow, which never comes. Tomorrow is deceptive, because it always gives us the wrong impression that there is a later day on which we can act, and reinforces our laziness thereby helping us to behave like the vulture. In the same way that the vulture does not build a nest, anybody who gives in to postponing things till tomorrow will have no “house”. Ida Scott Taylor succinctly puts it thus: “Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time”. As long as we keep on procrastinating, we have ourselves to blame because nothing will be accomplished.
At the beginning of the year, we make resolutions, and often promise to commit ourselves to following those resolutions as we do so. However, shortly after the resolutions are made, we realise how near impossible it is for us to keep our promises. It is not as if we do not have the good will to do what we enthusiastically resolved to do at the beginning of the year, it is rather that we give in to laziness and procrastination. We do not exhibit any strong commitment to the resolutions we make, hence any little distraction blunts our focus. The following are some of the resolutions:
Whereas some people resolve to stop drinking and getting drunk, others resolve to stop having extramarital affairs and defrauding others. Others still resolve to attend Mass and other Church services as required of every Catholic, say our daily prayers faithfully, pay more attention to our family and relatives than we did the previous year. The list could go on ad infinitum, but it has to stop somewhere. A myriad of resolutions are made every year but their translation into reality encounters difficulties because we show little or no commitment, we keep postponing.
It is important to remember that the concept tomorrow is deceptive because it never comes around, whatever we can do today, must never be postponed till tomorrow, for that explains why we often do not get things done. The only day we have is today; there is no tomorrow, and so we must desist from postponing things we can do today till a tomorrow that we do not have.
We cannot feign ignorance of what is right and what is wrong; what is virtuous and what is malicious, and since the human will was made by God to naturally turn toward the good, right and virtue, we normally desire what is good or right.
However, the opposite of righteousness and uprightness can sometimes appear attractive at first sight. Thus, even though we are very much aware that we should turn away from vice and sin and deviant behaviour, yet we procrastinate the decision to turn and the actual turning from evil and vice toward doing what is good and right. The resultant implication is that many people are persistently living in sin and vice wittingly.
Thus, we know that we should not steal money, murder, fornicate, cheat on our wife or husband, live in concubinage, gossip about people or make unjust and partial decisions, yet due to lack of a strong will to commit ourselves to doing them, we find ourselves behaving like the vulture. Consequently, a common phenomenon is that most people will deceive themselves that whatever they find themselves doing is the last time as they would never be repeated: drinking, cheating on their partner, stealing, lying and many others. However, they are never the last time that those activities are being engaged in; they keep recurring, thereby the cessation being postponed.
So, if we want to live as good Christians, we should forget about tomorrow and take all the decision and actions that are required of us today and only today all the while bearing in mind that we do not have any tomorrow. Thus, at the individual, Parish and Diocesan levels, we must act today and not postpone anything till tomorrow, because according to Samuel Johnson, “tomorrow is a great deceiver, and its deception never loses the charm of novelty”. Try and do it today; do not postpone it till tomorrow for cras, cras lingua provorum est.
